There’s a popular myth that you can’t read the right hand side of a chart. Of course there is no precognition, we know that from science, but it’s hardly a blank page! The first thing you know is that a trend is more likely to continue than change from one day to the next. That’s…
As usual, the unintended consequences of legislation demanded by politicians, who have no scientific background, to appease a public ignorant of most things, but certainly compartmentalised in their thinking, come back to bite the government on the arse. The snag is they’re biting everyone else harder, especially the supermarkets, who are in the midst of…
This is not a piece about how to interpret a fanfare, but a nice illustration of some of the articles I’ve written over the last few months coming together. I wrote a piece called “Breakouts are for Dummies” back in August. The basic point being that even a trained monkey can see and trade breakouts.…
My cousin works for EasyJet, and although he’s been in love with airlines since he was a kid, I don’t think that’s really the dream job. He wanted to be a pilot, but that didn’t work out and he went through various high end airlines which led to fate conspiring for him to end up…
There is some madness around in the market place these days. HSBC looks like it might perform a bit better because it may not have any regulatory fines in the next accounting period! It’s a pretty bad show if a company is marvelling in guidance that it won’t be fined by its own regulator during…
Hammerson (HMSO) is an interesting chart. They’re in retail shopping and have a portfolio of shopping centres, retail parks and that sort of thing in Europe. Now that looks very much like a bull flag there. Of course it looks like a bull flag because I’ve drawn one on. Contrary to the belief of many…
Perhaps until the ‘80s it was possible to say that governments had some control over their own economic destiny, and particularly that of their principal stock exchange. It’s not true anymore, and broadly the global economy will ultimately influence everything. We can capitalise on this as traders/investors by spotting when markets start to converge or…
Growing up, as I did, in London, I can count the number of times we had a White Christmas on one hand. There have been a few in recent years and apparently Ladbrokes have odds on a White Xmas at 4/1, and have cut the odds of a minimum temp of -16°C. So, given the…
I was running an event last week where a chap turned up and instead of offering three pound coins or similar to pay the entrance fee, he instead produced a rucksack filled with potatoes, which he was fairly confident were King Edwards, and asked if he could pay with them. He was deadly serious. There…
I remember a spate of white label spread betting sites popping up a few years ago. A white label, for those who aren’t familiar, is when someone uses another company’s product but puts their own name on it. The white label which you then write what you will on. They were things like Fred Bloggs…
